Highway rest areas no place to let your guard down

WARNING: If you are traveling by car this summer, stay alert when stopping at highway rest areas.

Meant to serve as safe grounds for a nap, snack or bathroom break, highway rest stops throughout Florida and across the country sometimes become the settings for drug deals, murders and other violent crimes.

Authorities say rest areas are generally safe and regularly patrolled, but vulnerable to crime because of their location.

"If you're going to stay there for any length of time, say, for a nap, you certainly want to lock your doors," said Lt. William Leeper, a trooper spokesman based in the Jacksonville region, home to three rest stops.

A Kentucky man was found murdered Jan. 4 at the Alligator Alley rest area near mile marker 40, on the western edge of Broward. Sheriff's investigators say the man was killed during a botched cocaine sale. Authorities charged a Miramar man in the death. Six months earlier, authorities discovered a woman's head floating in the water near a boat ramp at the rest area near mile marker 35 and eventually arrested two New York men in her killing.

One man stabbed another during an argument at an I-95 rest stop in St. Lucie County in September 2006. The wounded man survived.

In April 2001, a Missouri fugitive shot his girlfriend to death and then turned the gun on himself at a rest area along U. S. 41, near Naples. The couple had been traveling with an Oregon woman and her two young daughters. Weeks later, the woman was found shot to death in Nevada. The girls  2 years old, the other 4 months -- remain missing.

Other cases from across the country include the January 2005 death of an Ocala man, 70, who suffered a fatal heart attack immediately after a robbery attempt at an I-95 rest stop in Florence, S.C.

In May 2003, someone beat a Pensacola woman inside a rest stop bathroom along Interstate 65, near Montgomery, Ala., leaving her critically injured.

The potential dangers at the stopovers are enough for some travel experts to recommend an alternative for road trippers who need a nap: campgrounds.

"The safety in campgrounds is just not an issue," said Lance Wilson, executive director of the Florida RV Trade Association.

More advice from authorities and RV travel experts, who know a thing or two about safe places to park while on the road:

Be alert.

As you pull into the rest area, take notice of its name or the closest mile marker, in case there is an emergency and you need to tell authorities where you are.

Avoid parking close to tractor-trailers, which need a lot of space to maneuver and which could also block other people from seeing your car, providing the kind of cover that criminals often seek out.

Parents traveling with young children should use family restrooms, when available, that allow adults to accompany children. At the same time, older children and adults should have someone go with them to the rest room or wait outside.

Travelers who find themselves at a quiet rest stop at night should try to flag down a security guard or a state trooper and ask them to keep an eye out as you use the facilities, especially if traveling alone. If the rest stop is particularly isolated and empty, try to avoid stopping there at night. If possible, opt to use the indoor facilities at a fast food restaurant or convenience store.

RV travelers should never open their camper door to strangers. Keep the door locked, and when someone comes knocking, talk to them through a window or from behind the camper door.

It's illegal to sleep overnight at rest stops in Florida, not that authorities would recommend doing so. In other nearby states, it may not necessarily be illegal to park overnight at a rest area, but many have signs warning against it. Instead, drivers should map out campgrounds or state parks along their route where they'd be able to enter for a small fee and get some shuteye in the car.

Two masked gunmen stormed into a BP gas station Tuesday morning and fired several gunshots in a robbery attempt, but left without any money as the clerk took cover in the bulletproof glass booth surrounding the cash register.

If things had gone Nan Rich's way, she'd be in the governor's mansion right now. Instead, she's reduced to setting her sights on a County Commission seat, something she said just months ago that she "absolutely'' wasn't interested in.